iNkanyamba
Xhosa · numen · Xhosa traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Inkanyamba is a serpent of storm and water known to the Xhosa and Zulu, a great snake whose coiling body is imagined reaching from the sky to the earth and whose movement is seen in the whirlwind and the tornado. Most active in the summer, its anger is held to break out in the violent seasonal storms, and it is thought to dwell in deep river pools and beneath waterfalls, where contact with it is dangerous. Descriptions vary, some giving it the horned head of a beast and a serpent's body, others an eel- or fish-like tail. The name itself carries the double sense of the sky-snake and the tornado, so that the weather and its spirit are not sharply separated.
Domains
- weather storm
- rivers water
Powers
- raises tornadoes and summer storms
Sources
- Inkanyamba is a Nguni storm-serpent, a great snake of the sky whose anger is manifest in tornadoes and summer storms, dwelling in deep river pools and waterfalls.: Axel-Ivar Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns and Symbolism (London: Hurst, 1976) (secondary); W.D. Hammond-Tooke (ed.), The Bantu-Speaking Peoples of Southern Africa (London: Routledge, 1974) (secondary)